The placement cell of the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Durgapur, has written to 115 multinational companies asking them to consider allowing about 700 third year students to complete their mandatory internships by working from home.

Another 700 final year students of National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, who have managed to get a single or multiple summer jobs too are facing uncertainty due to possible delay and extension of the academic session due to the novel coronavirus outbreak. Every year the summer vacation of National Institute of Technology, Durgapur starts from first week of May and ends on 31 May.

But this year due to the lockdown, the summer vacation has already been announced and will continue till 31 May. The Union ministry of human resources development held a meeting recently with the directors of all NITs in the country. Thereafter the Director of NIT Durgapur, Professor Anupam Basu held a virtual meeting with the deans and various head of the departments. The summer training of the third year students starts from May and lasts till June. But this year due to complete lockdown all the students of the NITs, IITs, IIMs in the country have been facing the same problem.

“The respective departments will be making alternative arrangements with assignments, work on research projects, dissertations on specified topics etc for the third year intern students who cannot do the mandatory internship due to the lockdown of the industries and can do that from their homes during this extended summer vacation period,” informed Dr. Anupam Basu, director in a video message to the students.

Talking to The Statesman, Dr Nilotpal Banerjee, Dean (Alumni Affairs and Outreach) of NIT Durgapur informed that only the international students are staying in the campus hostel at present.

“Our placement department has written individually to all these companies to consider allowing the internship students to work from home at present due to the complete lockdown. If they can allow them to do some online assignments. However, it is difficult for many streams like Electrical, Civil, Mechanical, Metallurgy etc,”said Dr. Nilotpal Banerjee.

This year the third year students of the National Institute of Durgapur bagged summer training jobs with packages ranging from Rs.6,000 per month to Rs.1,00,000 per month. Normally, the engineering students get absorbed in those companies in which they work as interns.

“The maximum salary package of an NIT-final year student this year was Rs,44,00,000 per annum. But there will be change in the academic schedule this year due to the long lockdown as final semester exams cannot be completed within May and will take some more time. Hence unlike earlier years the final year students cannot be absorbed by the MNCs from June. We are also writing to these MNCs to look into the problems faced by those 700-odd final year students and consider their situation sympathetically,” said Tapan Kumar Saha, associate dean (Training and Placement) of NIT Durgapur.